On 23 February 2012 20:41, Kevin Richards <RichardsK@landcareresearch.co.nz> wrote:
Another problem is what the identifier refers to. As someone (I think Rich) said in a recent post, two different people may apply the same identifier to slightly different things - eg to the "name" of a person, or to the "person" itself. This is another barrier to reuse of shared identifiers.
My understanding of the semantic web is actually that giving DIFFERENT identifiers (and as Rich says: "globally unique", "persistent", and "actionable") to things is a GOOD thing. Depending on your purpose, two identifiers may or may not be the same. This is a standard problem, and I believe it is much easier solved if I have 2 identifiers and separate sameAs assertions. I can use the existing sameAs as my default, but can easily differ in opinion (by using contradictory sameAs - which may involve localizing and modifying the default sameAs, but at least it is solvable.) With regard to publications: Should a a) OpenAccess Preprint b) OpenAccess Postprint c) ClosedAccess Elsevier Journal (well, rare to find these together :-) ) have the same ID or not? For many purposes they are sameAs, but not for all. ---- However, Rod is correct about the poor history (although I don't consider LSIDs actionable, they are about as actionable as the text strings - you can machine-resolve both, but...). I just thing Rod should call for re-use of identifiers where it is believed to be identical for all purposes and new identifiers PLUS sameAs relations where uncertain. Gregor